Show HN: Nodetube – Open-source YouTube alternative with image and audio uploads - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mayeaux/nodetube <comment><USER2> > Deploy to Heroku

They have a soft limit of 2TB traffic/month, so you're probably not gonna get very far on that platform.

I run a very high traffic site on a hobby budget and my experience is that you're probably not gonna get around shopping for dedicated servers. That is if you want 500TB - 1PB of traffic per month to be in any way affordable. Forget AWS, Heroku and all that stuff. They're roughly twenty times (literally) more expensive.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a dedicated server provider you can recommend?

<comment><USER4> Hetzner offers dedicated servers that basically have unrestricted traffic amounts. You can see the pricing here: [https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated- rootserver](https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver)

This is what they write about their "unlimited traffic":

> Traffic usage is unlimited and free of charge. Please note that our > unlimited traffic policy does not apply to servers that have the 10G uplink > addon.

<comment><USER5> Would Hetzner be a good choice for hosting a site with mostly US-based visitors?

If I got a 1Gbps Hetzner server would I be able to serve 1Gbps to the US?

<comment><USER2> I have 3 Hetzner "1 Gbps" servers in my fleet right now, and my experience is that you're only going to get about 50% of that bandwidth reliably to any place in the world (I suspect they secretly capped me, considering how exactly each server keeps hovering around that number).

They're still a good deal at that price point though.

A server provider that delivered on exactly what they're selling has been online.net, though they ramped up their prices recently. When they sell you X Mbit/s amount of "premium" bandwidth, you're always going to get at least that. If you exceed it a lot they'll cap you to _exactly_ that though. I used to have 8 dedicated servers with them at ~30 Euro/month (excl. taxes) each for a total of ~3Gbit/s bandwidth.

I've had some complaints about download speeds by users from NA when using German-based providers and significantly less complaints when using servers in France (i.e. online.net) or elsewhere west of Germany. I cap download speeds at 3MB/s per user anyways though.

Though beggars can't be choosers. I buy any cheap bandwidth offers I see.

Another thing to look out for if you're planning to saturate 1Ggbit/s is using SSDs and/or a good amount (>=32GB) of RAM. You'll probably not manage to do that if you have 1TB worth of files on a HDD and 8GB RAM for your OS's page cache. If you're planning to use SSL to serve stuff make sure your CPU isn't super old or an Intel Atom or something (I tried having a fleet of a lot of mini dedis once...).

I should write a blog post about all this and more at some point. Maybe next year?

<comment><USER5> So bandwidth from Hetzner to USA isn't any worse than to Europe? In both cases you're getting about 500 Mbps for a 1 Gbps server?

> I should write a blog post about all this and more at some point. Maybe next > year?

Please do. I'd be interested to read more about your experiences.

<comment><USER2> > So bandwidth from Hetzner to USA isn't any worse than to Europe?

Europe is always going to be better by some margin.

And, as I said, I've had some complaints with German-based providers (like Hetzner) from users in NA. Not enough to be a serious consideration though when weighted against cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It can't federate with peertube yet, but there's an issue open for it with the author's support: [https://github.com/mayeaux/nodetube/issues/32](https://github.com/mayeaux/nodetube/issues/32)

I think there's a good case to be made for multiple federated clients _and_ servers to ensure the health of the ecosystem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely, since ActivityPub is becoming a W3C standard it makes sense for as many social sites as possible to support it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The main advantage that keeps people using YouTube seems to be discoverability (and of course momentum). Would it be feasible to make a search engine that aggregates across YouTube and some of these alternatives to facilitate gradual transitioning, or are there technical/policy limitations to doing that?

<comment><USER8> I'm involved with some large youtube channels and wanted to comment on why Youtube works for content creators.

There's 3 reasons why they like Youtube:

1\. easy-to-use (free, no administration)

2\. discoverability, though large channels already have a built-in audience that is self-viral!

3\. monetization, typically $1k - $5k/million views/month (eligible above 10,000 subscribers for acceptable content)

The downsides are:

1\. "copyrights", which are mostly Youtube takedowns (seldom DMCA)

2\. the sporadic nature of payments. You might get $0 next month, or $1000. Very mysterious, so creators rely on Patreon to pay their rent.

3\. Occasionally your comments get disabled, related to "copyrights." Then you have to manually re-enable, which is a hassle for hundreds of videos.

Oh, and your account could be deactivated at any time. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly though there's something to be said for an up and coming platform. I mean I just uploaded some stupid video of Bill Gates and it is on the way to 2k views on NodeTube right now, I think there is a first-adopters bonus to being the first to adopt a new platform. And I have some good plans for monetization as well, really the big issue is breaking the monopoly YouTube has. Maybe once that happens they'll actually not treat their creators like crap which would be a win in and of itself.

<comment><USER9> I just uploaded porn. How will it be handled?

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you see the comment I left? Porn is actually against the TOS, and this instance itself is going to be SFW only by the end of the night, just a heads up.

<comment><USER9> I didn't.

Thanks for the reply.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't mind if someone forks NodeTube and has a more permissive TOS but for this main node I want it to be pretty family friendly yknow just because it's really a proof of concept for the devs of the world at the moment a bit more than a filesharing site. And hey no problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the image and audio uploads are a good first attempt at differentiation, although it does open you up to competition from two other specialized giants (imgur, soundcloud), so now you've got a war on 3 fronts.

I'd instead focus on differentiation specific to video uploads to attract a niche of YouTube users.

YT is over 10 years old, so they've covered some major ground and solved many infrastructure problems that you haven't. They also have distribution via apps on pretty much every smart device. Between Vimeo and YT, video hosting is arguably a solved problem unless you can find a hard to replicate feature that they can't and is important to a niche of users.

Best of luck, but seriously consider whether you're passionate enough about this project that you will put in the effort to grow it to a point where you've found that niche and users are supporting it in some way to the point where it sufficiently covers your costs and time.

<comment><AUTHOR> The response I've gotten to this project has been incredible, it just needs to get in front of enough eyes where the OS community behind it grows a bit and we get several instances up. The code is bomb, it will go viral with some eyeballs, I have no doubt about. Thanks for the warning but I know a deadend project when I see one and this isn't it lol.

NodeTube also has monetization, livestreaming, lots of epic stuff. Enough interest on Github and this thing will go to the moon in my opinion.

<comment><USER10> > it will go viral with some eyeballs... Enough interest on Github and this > thing will go to the moon in my opinion.

I'm only offering this feedback as someone who has been down a similar path, and I sincerely hope for the success of the project. You're expecting or at least hoping for lightning to strike. Consider the case where if it doesn't and you need to move forward. It's the intellectually honest thing to do, and will cover the most likely scenario.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah this is still a side project for me, I would only move to work on it full-time if it was already profitable/generating enough value for me that it would make sense. But I don't see myself giving this project up anytime soon I love it as a project too much and the world needs it. But thanks for the sober analysis I'll definitely take it to mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love the idea and have been wanting a good OSS YT alternative for some time now. My initial impression from looking at the code and browsing the demo site is that this project is very much in it's infancy and has a long way to go before I'd consider running it in production as an admin or frequenting the site as a viewer. E.g. code smell, poor comment functionality, UX issues, minimal documentation and examples...

Something I think would help bring in contributors is an architectural diagram and/or blog post on how the subsystems fit together.

Best of luck to all involved, it won't be easy but it's certainly a worthy goal!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi bavell thanks for the feedback. The codebase itself is pretty robust in my opinion but the documentation it sparse at the moment, it's still very much in its infancy as an OS project, I mean a bunch of really cool features that are built in are not even mentioned at the moment because I haven't had time to get to it yet. So hopefully we can get that documentation to a point where developers feel happy to fork and join in the development, that is the big goal, but thanks for your feedback!

<comment><USER11> I'm looking forward to seeing the project's progress!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> fyi: seconds after deploying this, my heroku account that I haven't used in a year randomly got suspended with no details.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps it's because you haven't used it and their system suspects someone stole your details and wants to run a Bitcoin miner or something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool to see a youtube alternative. Registered and became the 60th user, however it seems a bit slashdotted already with upload of my first video hanging at 99%, "About" link gives internal error, profile picture not being able to upload. Like the initiative however, keep it coming and hope [https://nodetube.live/](https://nodetube.live/) will stay around, however understand if you will need ads to make it work financially soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the support! If you hop in the Discord I can take a look at some of those things with you, the profile pics not working is a known bug with the B2 implementation, meant to get it done yesterday but the site's been going pretty viral so have been mostly dealing with that. Here's the Discord link if you're interested thanks for the feedback! [https://discord.gg/ejGah8H](https://discord.gg/ejGah8H)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can you tell me if I'm understanding this right?

Some people deploy their own Node Tube instances. Each instance has users (creators and viewers) and content (videos, images, comments, etc).

If so, how are NT instances joined together? How does discovery happen? Are users shared between instances? Do you have an about or summary page that answers these and other questions?

Really excited and glad to see YouTube competitors. I think there's a lot of opportunity there. Plus, I watched a video of Bill Gates jumping over a chair and it worked perfectly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently NT instances are not joined together but that is a planned feature using the Fediverse and ActivityPub. Probably the best place to find info is the Github if you scroll down to features, or to ask me in the Discord (also linked on Github). The Readme is super incomplete missing a lot of information on a lot of features but I'll probably have a chance to take care of that tomorrow. Thanks for the interest and yeah that's a classic Bill Gates video had to upload it ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The More competition for YouTube the better.

The bigger question to answer: How do you appeal to viewers?

<comment><USER17> The bigger question is how do you plan to foot the bill for serving videos at that scale.

<comment><USER18> If everyone downloads once and serves twice, then you can reach _every human_ in about 30 iterations.

If you want to prevent client storage because you want to create a _repeated controllable attention_ resource, then you _will_ have a scaling problem.

(It's too bad you can distribute everything as a torrent and give people an easy way to pay for the movie they just downloaded, even if it was just "on their honor".)

<comment><USER19> Getting 1 video to a billion people is dead simple, getting a million videos to 1,000 people is damn hard. YouTube serves both ends of the spectrum.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really good points raised here guys. Here's my take on each point raised: 1) Appeal to viewers: it's slick, no clutter, really fun, and people hate YouTube. There's lots of appeal already just based on the reaction I've gotten posting it around a bit. 2) NodeTube has built in integration with Stripe where you can offer a 'plus' version of the site for $5/month. $5/month gets a LOT of hosting bang for your buck, so the bet is that your Plus subscriptions will outpace your hosting costs, I feel quite confident in that. 3) Regarding a video that may sit on the platform for a long time with zero views, my suggestion would be in that case since the file is serving the purposes more of being backed up rather than serving as content that you would prompt the user to pay a fee for using NodeTube as a 'backup service'. It seems harsh but if profitability is important to the project then you would remove those uploads that satisfy a condition that basically marks them as 'totally inactive, only using the platform as a content backup'. Interested to hear your guys thoughts on this concept.

Thanks guys!

<comment><USER20> > _people hate YouTube._

Do they? In my bubble, that's certainly a very uncommon sentiment from the consumer side.

<comment><AUTHOR> My honest opinion is yes. Look at how disliked the Rewind videos are, or how much flack YouTube gets on Twitter. Susan Wojicki is not looked on with much fan fare.

<comment><USER21> My honest opinion is that that's an opinion that might have arisen in a bubble, considering that multiple, actually mature alternatives to YouTube exist and yet its content and userbase continue to grow at a frankly alarming rate. It's like how a lot of people on here seem so certain that Facebook is a dead platform that nobody sane uses and everybody hates, when its number of _daily_ active users ranks in the billions.

I think part of that is people not recognizing the difference between "I hate this platform, as in I will _actually_ put my money where my mouth is and leave or boycott it at the slightest provocation" and "I hate this platform, as in I grumble about it because pretty much every hugely successful venture has everyone grumbling about one thing or the other, but my net feelings towards it are actually rather positive and I have no intentions of leaving it".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's privacy like? One of the big problems with Peertube is that participating peers can gather information on what you watch. Is Nodetube any better? Ideally, I would not need to let anybody else know which videos I'm watching.

<comment><AUTHOR> Personally I would never implement WebTorrent on production because of that exact issue. If you wanted to have it turned off by default and then have a user opt-in that would be one thing but I would never have it on by default. NodeTube doesn't share your IP publicly it just serves videos from the server itself. Thanks for your input!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> You're using backblaze as a storage medium?

ex: [https://f000.backblazeb2.com/file/fred12/anthony/PgIOufN.mp4](https://f000.backblazeb2.com/file/fred12/anthony/PgIOufN.mp4)

<comment><AUTHOR> NodeTube has a really nice BackBlaze integration so I'm just using it for the purposes of this demo app atm. Even with the high traffic the site is experiencing right now it's incredibly inexpensive to use B2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How is this different from PeerTube?

</comment><comment><USER25> How to del upload?</comment>


AI Will Eat UI - <AUTHOR> http://www.artyomavanesov.com/blog/how-ai-will-eat-ui <comment><USER2> Hard disagree, at least, for the next 5 years. We're still struggling to maintain "previous version" information density and "previous version" performance in all the various websites and apps that are undergoing redesigns.

An AI will not predict when I want to draw a construction line in Fusion360 and automatically select or display a clickable widget in a suitable and predictable manner. The correct choice is to give lots of options, visible at a glance, with hotkeys they are reconfigurable.

I lament the day that unpredictable icons line a toolbar changing as often as I change a tool. And this whole discussion happens independent of the styling desires a company wishes to exert, with smooth transitions, animated modals, etc.

Maybe I'll eat my hat within 5 years, but it'll be because it has been forced upon us instead of any actual user experience feedback.

<comment><USER3> Have we simply given up on QA?

Determinism in a system has been a cornerstone of validation. Even outside of software circles (the term 'test fixture' originally referred to a contraption you fitted hardware into to serve as a mock 'environment' for testing, which could fake inputs and/or register outputs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a pretty awful take.

\- AI surely has a place in design tooling, but designing UIs from the ground- up without human intervention would require a deep understanding of both human psychology and the domain at hand, which I really think would require artificial general intelligence.

\- We're still leagues away from AGI.

\- Is the author suggesting that UIs will restructure themselves in real time under subconscious feedback from the user? There is nothing that makes a UI more anxiety-inducing than unpredictability and inconsistency. The idea of a UI that's constantly in flux _by design_ is, in a word, hilarious.

\- That Autodesk feature doesn't even have anything to do with AI, from what I can tell. It's just a fancy constraint solver.

<comment><USER5> Your third point doesn't seem that hilarious to me. What is wrong with a UI that is constantly trying to predict what is best for you? It doesn't necessarily mean that the flux will be chaotic or unwanted. I can imagine a UI which changes slightly based on how difficult it is for me to find what I am looking for. Not one which changes so often that it is it's own problem, but one which changes often enough to reduce some of the pain points in my workflows.

<comment><USER6> Automatically changing interfaces are terrible.

Static menus are faster that magically changing menus. People want to know where to click to do a thing.

User customizable menus can be faster (when used well) than static menus.

Here's a study: [http://user.ceng.metu.edu.tr/~tcan/se705/Schedule/assignment...](http://user.ceng.metu.edu.tr/~tcan/se705/Schedule/assignment6.pdf)

IMO, you'd get more mileage out of a menu with "Frequently used commands" that you can lock items into than with an AI rearranging stuff. And the algorithm is much simpler.

The hard part in UI is discoverability not repeatability. We would be wise to develop an easy to use workflow for finding commands based on what the user wants to do. Natural language processing could help here. Find a command: user types "How do I draw a box around some text". The search results should show where to find each command in nested menus, and be able to play an animated workflow example. An AI solution could help a user sift through a result set and find the choice that best matches their needs (for the box example, one way to add a box would be to turn on a border for a given paragraph, another way to get a box would be to add a free-form vector rectangle, positioned on the page).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "By measuring our heart rate, respiration, pupil size, and eye movement, our AI's will be able to map our psychology in high resolution. And armed with this information, our interfaces will morph and adapt to our mood as we go about our day."

Totally disagree.

Consistency is one of the primary foundations of UI, and most adaptions made today are really quite problematic.

They haven't really given any examples of either this specific prediction, or even the predictions at large.

Second is the issue of integration - our homes could all be fully automated today if we could agree on a bunch of protocols, but we don't.

Shoot - even our mail is stolen from our porches because we can't get our act together on 'lock box' situations for the neighbourhood etc..

There's no practical reason to have my pulse, sweat, stress levels perpetually monitored, let alone have that integrated into some arbitrary app so they can adjust the ads I see.

So no.

This is 'peak AI hype' kind of stuff.

</comment><comment><USER8> The overwhelming sentiment in comments seems to be dismissive.

However, I can see how one day "AI" can easily generate automatically a very functional User Interface for enterprise software - think Oracle, SAP etc. Point it to a DB, then prescribe what UI style guide and it can totally generate a functional and perhaps even a beautiful web or mobile app.

And if we think about it - it can also perhaps generate 99% of all the websites that exists today (news, landing pages, blogs...).

</comment><comment><USER9> AI for helping you design and test UX, perhaps. I could see ML being used to 'simulate' eye tracking (and I'll bet some startup is working on that already).

But morphing UI based on subconcious behaviour, I'm not buying it. Short of actual mind reading, there isn't enough information in those to make a change in UI be consistent. Is my heart rate increasing a sign that I want the lasso tool in Photoshop? I don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just Plain Wrong:

Reason 1: Generative Design is a horrible basis for building UIs.

GD requires a well understood model of how the design needs to operate and be built (ie, physics + specifications + machine tool kinematics). We don't have a physics of UI design. GD makes weird, ugly stuff.

Reason 2: Do you not remember how awful Clippy was?

See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant)

TLDR Extract: The program was widely reviled among users as intrusive and annoying,[22][23] and was criticized even within Microsoft... Smithsonian Magazine called Clippit "one of the worst software design blunders in the annals of computing".

Reason 3: Also brought to you by Microsoft: the UI Hell of Adaptive Menus in Office 2000.

See: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2005/10/10/combatin...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2005/10/10/combating- the-perception-of-bloat-why-the-ui-part-3-2/)

TLDR Extract: Adaptive Menus were not successful. In my opinion, they actually add complexity to the interface...Auto-customization, unless it does a perfect job, is usually worse than no customization at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not about rearranging menu-items, but rather learning how an individual user could optimally interact with an application and then tailoring the interface accordingly.

If you visit booking.com it's unlikely you'll ever see the same website twice. It's because their product team does continuous design and A/B testing, trying to come up with the best one-size-fits-all solution. If this loop of designing and testing were to be automated, UIs could be designed based on individual user data rather than aggregate.

The premise is that just like our content feeds (e.g. Facebook, YouTube autoplay) are unique, so will our context (i.e. interface) become unique.

<comment><USER6> Define optimally. Seriously, there is always going to be some easily measurable value(s) that will operate as a proxy for "optimal". Even if the model perfectly maximizes the goodness of the proxy values for every customer, the model will still be wrong inasmuch as the proxies are divorced from the actual "optimal". Also, if optimal-ness is focused entirely on maximizing revenue under the current model, the result will be a an automated user-abuse mechanism that entraps the user and forces them to put up with a horrible experience just to eke out a 3% boost in ad impressions and the 0.003% boost in clicks that generates.

And I hate, hate, hate that aspect of Facebook. God forbid you should ever want to find a post a second time. God forbid I should see posts from my friends in a timely manner. Nah, show me posts from banks and cell phone companies that I will not do business with, ever, and show them 50 times.

YouTube Autoplay is a pain in my ass that I keep having to disable.

It's too bad we weren't responsible enough to manage Usenet and email in a Spam-free way. Now we've driven ourselves into a walled-garden, crappy version of Usenet with proprietary clients that serve only the site operators. At least we know where the spam comes from...

<comment><AUTHOR> When it comes to Facebook someone is already making the decision about the optimal balance between content and ads. However, currently this decision is at least to some extent made on aggregate.

As a result, some users get so turned off by ads that they leave the platform, whereas others continue using a it because they don't regard ads as (such high of) a cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Will see about that.</comment>


When Bias in Product Design Means Life or Death - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-bias-product-design-means-life-death-carol-reiley <comment><USER2> Why not just make the very sound argument that white American men are an extreme minority of the population and designing to their needs puts your product at risk in the marketplace?

Losing a $1x10^11 market for want of a $1x10^8 investment in talent diversity up front is just poor investment.

</comment><comment><USER3> A well-intentioned article, but it makes the usual set of mistakes. After discussing gender, racial, and other forms of diversity, it says this:

> Unfortunately, when a single homogeneous group is designing and engineering > the vast majority of technology, they will consciously and unconsciously > pass on their own biases.

But there is not a single homogeneous group designing the vast majority of technology. First of all, in the US, the bulk of tech workers are white and Asian men, and includes a large amount of people not born in the US. That's not a homogeneous group. Not in race, skin color, native language, etc.

Second, the US is not the only place where technology is designed and engineered. A very large amount is created in Asia, in particular. One example the author focuses on is cars: Japan is obviously of major importance in that area. From cars to phones to game consoles, technology is a very global industry. No single homogeneous group controls it.

The author means well, but is mostly parroting common speaking points including their mistakes and biases. We can and should do better on this topic.</comment>


Angora, mutation-based coverage guided fuzzer was open sourced - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/AngoraFuzzer/Angora <comment><AUTHOR> Research paper about Angora was published here: [http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~hchen/paper/chen2018angora.pdf](http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~hchen/paper/chen2018angora.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER2> The page doesn't answer the question most people would be asking: How is it better or different from AFL?

Edit: The linked paper has more information [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.01307.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.01307.pdf)</comment>


Largest Animal Study on Cell Tower Radiation Confirms Cancer Link - <AUTHOR> http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/worlds-largest-animal-study-on-cell-tower-radiation-confirms-cancer-link-953696.htm <comment><USER2> This is a better study than previous ones, in that it used "environmental" levels of radiation, rather than blasting subjects with an amount of radiation equivalent to laying your head on top of a cell tower for 22 hours a day.

However: out of 817 individuals in the control group, 2 had benign tumors, 2 had malignant tumors, 1 had glial cell hyperplasia, and 2 had malignant glial tumors. Out of 409 individuals in the highest-dosed group, 4 had benign tumors, 0 had malignant tumors, 0 had glial cell hyperplasia, and 3 had malignant glial tumors.

[https://imgur.com/a/VeEUb](https://imgur.com/a/VeEUb)

Rates are elevated, but given the differences in population sizes and the relatively very small differences in rates involved, this study looks like a very good candidate for the decline effect that's been plaguing similar studies for a while now. (e.g. a regression to the mean; that the effect numbers, being small, would disappear in subsequent studies.)

Any potential link between cell phones, or wifi, and cancer, still has the fundamental problem that we should have seen cancer rates rise dramatically over the last 15 years in populations all over the world, and ... we haven't. While there have been more and more findings on other causes for cancer (and preventable mortality, like heart disease), glial cancers aren't increasing in any manner suggestive of a link to ubiquitous environmental microwave radiation.

<comment><USER3> > we should have seen cancer rates rise dramatically

wouldn't have to be dramatic.

> and ... we haven't.

reference?

<comment><USER4> _In the United States, the overall cancer death rate has declined since the early 1990s. The most recent SEER Cancer Statistics Review, updated in September 2016, shows that cancer death rates decreased by:

1.8% per year among men from 2004 to 2013

1.4% per year among women from 2004 to 2013

1.4% per year among children ages 0–19 from 2009 to 2013_

From [https://www.cancer.gov/about- cancer/understanding/statistics](https://www.cancer.gov/about- cancer/understanding/statistics). Yes, that's US only, but the US has built a lot of cellular and wifi infrastructure during that time of cancer rate decline.

<comment><USER5> Technically, it's not death rates that matter, but occurrence rates. Death rates could decline because of better treatment outcomes.

<comment><USER6> This. Cancer death rates != Cancer occurrence rates

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm remaining skeptical. The NTP study they mention had methodological problems. David Gorski of Science Based Medicine wrote about that study when it made the rounds ([https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-a-rat-study-with- margina...](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-a-rat-study-with-marginal- results-does-not-prove-that-cell-phones-cause-cancer-no-matter-what-mother- jones-and-consumer-reports-say/)):

 _What's problematic about this study is that, even though there were 90 rats in each group, that's actually a small number to detect meaningful differences in low frequency events. Here's what I mean. The study reports increased incidences of tumors in the brains and hearts of the male rats. ... Comparing such low frequency events between groups can be very problematic, particularly in the case low plausibility associations with multiple comparisons._

(I originally wrote something about not knowing the control group cancer rates, but thaumaturgy has access to the paper and addressed that in a sibling comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16659270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16659270))

<comment><USER7> It's a very low rate of increase, and while it may be statistically significant given the right statistical massage, I don't think I would hang my reputation on that p-value. This research group has come under fire for their numbers before, both from Congress and I believe from NIH. This is just one of hundreds of similar studies on environmental effects, and I don't want to say that these people are in the profession of making mountains over molehills, but I have not read anything about the authors or their institution which has given me any confidence in their result.

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't stake my reputation on ANY p-value. I don't want to derail the conversation, but the p- value should have been discarded (more or less) years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here is Ars Technica's discussion of why they _aren 't_ covering this paper, with a good critical discussion of how to look at these results.

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/a-critical- analysis-...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/a-critical-analysis-of- the-latest-cellphone-safety-scare/)

</comment><comment><USER10> The HN discussion of the NTP study discussed: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11784160](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11784160)

This one seems better in that it involves an order of magnitude more rats, but it's still so small that just one rat difference makes a huge change in the results.

I also wonder (more for the NTP study due to size) just how many comparable studies have been done where the results were statistically insignificant (or where the results would indicate that cell phone radiation reduced cancer.....) that were then simply dismissed and never publicized because they were uninteresting.

Edit: Also, wouldn't 5G be _more_ desirable because it's going to result in much lower power emissions (both tower and device) much as the change from AMPS to the various digital options drastically reduced power requirements?

</comment><comment><USER11> The world's largest animal study on cell tower radiation is more likely one of several cohort studies on humans (often with more than a million subjects) which indicate that if there is a non-ionizing radiation link to brain cancer, it is extremely tenuous and completely overshadowed by genetic factors and other lifestyle factors. If cell tower radiation significantly increased the likelihood of malignant cancers, we would know it by all the extra dead people.

<comment><USER11> Useful graph : [https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/brain.html](https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/brain.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What mechanism do they think lead to this "increase". RF we use for telecommunications does not have enough energy for the photo electric effect. At worst it just heats you up. If RF causes cancer then my own body heat should cause cancer...

Also cancers rates in humans have remained pretty much unchanged from my understanding. So if there is an effect is it limited to rat physiology/biology? Like DNA that is more effected by heat ect... Also if I remember right rats have a body temperature of about 38 C or 100 F. So if it is a thermal effect larger animals should have a better buffer.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is an absolute joke. Take a look at the data. [https://sci- hub.hk/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...](https://sci- hub.hk/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935118300367)

The sample size is far too low to draw any conclusions. Only a small handful of rats in each group got tumors. The authors must know this! They got a p-value <0.05 for just _one_ of the numbers, the male rats at 50 V/m, 1.4% incidence of Schwannomas. The entire group (both female and male) was only at 1.2% and this was not considered statistically significant. By the way, the one-tenth-dose group (5 V/m) had fully 1.5% incidence of Schwannomas.

And yet the conclusion claims "These experimental studies provide sufficient evidence to call for the re-evaluation of IARC conclusions regarding the carcinogenic potential of RFR in humans." I have no words.

</comment><comment><USER14> For people who emphasize the "non-ionizing" nature of such EMF. I remember, back in organic chemistry back... oh, some decades ago, learning how non- ionizing EMF could be used to influence reactions and reaction rates.

It may not break bonds, but it still causes them to flex, vibrate, etc. And the resulting variations in configuration, and percent of time spent in such variations, influences chemical reactions.

So, let's say you have a chemical reaction that has a certain chance of producing a malign result or a factor in an eventual malign result.

Let's say your cell phone radiation heightens the level of that reaction.

You just increased your risk. Without directly ionizing anything.

Now, it's been a LONG time since I took chemistry. But while I've seldom seen this aspect of EMF discussed WRT risk from cell phone radiation, I've never seen it refuted.

And no one has a catalog of all the chemical reactions going on in the human body. Including those induced by transient and variable exposure to external agents. Chemicals absorbed through exposure. Drugs taken. Variable biomes. Etc. Much less how EMF might influence them.

Just food for thought.

So, studies like this continue to be warranted. Despite the radiation tacitly being "non-ionizing".

<comment><USER15> You're talking about heat.

<comment><USER14> Quickly: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4846869/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4846869/)

I ended up skimming part of it. Doesn't quite get to what I meant, in terms of a clear explanation.

Chemical reaction rates depend in part upon the structure of the reagents (as well, potentially that of a catalyst).

RF can stimulate, without breaking, the intra-molecular chemical bonds. This in turn can produce alterations in the geometry of the molecule. This can, for example, make the site of a potential bonding (a chemical reaction) more accessible, physically and/or in terms of the field strengths of electromagnetic fields of the bonding point bond and also adjacent bonds capable of influencing the rate of reaction.

I found this harder to (quickly) google up than I expected. I guess my chemistry professors were a bit "ahead of the curve"; the department did have the reputation of being one of the top in the country for its size and the type of institution in which it resided.

Another example of this: Discussing nascent concerns in the biochemical and biology fields that rather than saturated fats, manufactured, partially- hydrogenated fats were starting to look like the real culprits in pathologies such as coronary artery disease. This was in 1985.

About 20 years later, I started reading articles in the popular press about these "bad fats".

Anyway, its been too long for me to remember a specific chemical reaction as an example, but the mechanism and explanation of same seemed pretty clear and evident, way back then.

Not "heat" pushing the whole molecule around. Radiation causing e.g. compressional and flexing vibration in the intra-molecular chemical bonds. Sometimes rotation? Transition between configurations for molecules capable of having more than one; corresponding influence on the time spent in each configuration, as the molecule transitioned between them.

P.S. I'm outside academia, and so I face the ubiquitous "paywall" with respect to most journal content and the like. And I'm NO expert in any of this. But the people who were telling me this, were, to the extent I accurately remember and represent what they said.

<comment><USER15> That linked research is discussing the effects of _high energy_ (between 0 and 1000W, with written analyses of the 150W and 300W conditions) 2.45GHz radiation on the catalyzing properties of specific chemical reactions (CuO-Cu- ZSM-5, BaMnO3, and BaFeO3 catalysts with NO). I certainly was _presuming_ that your vague memories from a standard class you took decades ago were about the common, statistical changes in molecular geometry as a function of heat, and it is possible that your class was discussing the bleeding edge of chemical synthesis at the time ("Since the use of MWs for synthesis reactions first appeared in 1986"). Regardless, the obvious test would be to measure the _specific_ chemical effects on DNA under specific low energy microwave frequencies.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, ok, I may look like an idiot.

But I've read a lot of comments, over the years, to the effect that non- ionizing radiation simply can't be a factor, because it doesn't remove electrons and break chemical bonds.

And my own, very limited but -- for me, at least, elucidating -- educational experience has been that that is not the case. Non-ionizing radiation can affect chemical reactions.

So, if cell phone radiation is not risk factor in cancer, the argument needs to go further than, "It's non-ionizing."

Your mention of the energy level / quantity of the non-ionizing radiation involved in the link I managed to find, I find to be a pertinent difference.

Anyway, sorry for any annoyance.

P.S. I upvoted your response, by the way. I appreciate it, and I didn't mean to come across as confrontational, if I did.

<comment><USER16> While I am highly skeptical of RF radiation as a significant cause of cancer, I sympathize with your attitude.

Quite disingenious is the ionizing vs non-ionizing radiation dichotomy. I guess this is historically rooted in the cancerous effects of gammma photons.

Consider the following dilemma: is visible red light ionizing radiation?

If not: how can the non-ionizing red light trigger chemical reactions? or are the cones that sense red light strictly thermal sensors (i.e. bolometers)?

If yes: perhaps we should ban all visible light :)

I prefer this example because

* it is not a hypothetical radiation influence, i.e. most of us can see a red strawberry, in a sense this is a benign photo-chemical reaction, even though red light is typically not classified as 'ionizing', nobody denies cones can sense red light.

* beccause it illustrates that 'ionizing-ness' is not only dependent upon the characteristics of the radiation, but also on the characteristics of the subjected reagents/cellular structures/... which would be a monumental task to verify the harmlessness for all used radio frequencies and all subject reagents/cellullar structures/...

That said, we have bigger problems with other carcinogenous things/behaviours/... so I think the antenna scares are relatively unfounded, although we should keep an open mind for when a more serious effect is ever reported, after all we are using parts of the spectrum that I suspect were virtually completely absent as potential evolution pressures in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> the numbers on this are much less impressive than the headline would suggest - we're talking results that depend on singletons.

the treatment is also not really properly controlled, since they don't have a condition which includes rats receiving the same SAR but in some, presumably non-threatening frequency. that is, what if the effects are simply a result of any rat that is RF heated? IMO, it's telling that although they tested a ramp of increasing SAR, they can't claim proportionate incidence, or even monotonically increasing with SAR.

</comment><comment><USER18> Fellow Canadians can find a map of cell towers here: [http://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/cancellsites.html](http://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/cancellsites.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> What does this mean about Wifi? Can Wifi also cause these same issue, especially if you are sleeping 1-2 rooms away from it?

<comment><USER20> Since Wifi uses other frequencies, the answer is maybe. We simply don't know enough. It looks like the effect found in this study was too faint to draw any conclusions.

The inverse square law says that a Wifi station two rooms away would expose you to very little radiation. Unless of course you mean that your base station is two rooms away but your cell phone connected to it is right next to your head. Then you should move the base station closer so the phone can connect on lower power levels. Or just turn off your phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> You can't confirm something that has very little evidence. The prior for this hypothesis is very low.

</comment><comment><USER22> does anyone know the pattern they emit?

edit: found it, but sadly without scale. No Idea how dangerous the lobes would be: [http://www.emfguru.co.uk/kumar/kumar%20figure1.JPG](http://www.emfguru.co.uk/kumar/kumar%20figure1.JPG)

<comment><USER23> "does anyone know the pattern they emit?"

Naturally you can assume the vertical cross section of the radiation pattern will focused below the horizon toward cell phone users. Gain is typically on the order of 8-10 DBi. Power is usually in the low 10's of watts. Line-of- sight to the main lobe of a 30W transmitter with 10 DBi of gain at 100 meters you see an e-field of 0.95 V/m. Anything between you an that tower will drop the e-field by orders of magnitude.

52-6F-62 writes: "We have two over top of us, and another two on the building next door."

The towers above you are radiating away from you. You "see" radiation from the building next door. At least that's the most likely arrangement.

<comment><USER22> I guess I'm in a side-lobe (~12m down, ~12m to the side), but hopefully the roof is thick enough to dampen a lot (it's flat, so there is a bunch of steel and concrete there).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if they just threw away data from three other control groups...

<comment><USER25> i wonder if they never publicized other studies they ran that didn't show the effect, or actually showed the opposite effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Mandatory xkcd about cell phones [https://xkcd.com/925/](https://xkcd.com/925/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Original source of the press release: [http://www.sbwire.com/press- releases/worlds-largest-animal-s...](http://www.sbwire.com/press- releases/worlds-largest-animal-study-on-cell-tower-radiation-confirms-cancer- link-953696.htm)

Please don't submit mere republications. (It's in the HN guidelines.)

<comment><USER28> Or go straight to the source, vs the PR statement?

[https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2018.01.037](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2018.01.037)</comment></comment>


Pale Blue Dot - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot <comment><USER2> Yes, a pale blue dot is our home :)

There is only one and a lifetime is not enough to see all of it.</comment>


Show HN: New book on SaaS app management and security (free until EOD tomorrow) - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/Controlling-Your-SaaS-Environment-Applications-ebook/dp/B076Q9673Y/ <comment><USER2> David Politis is the founder and CEO of BetterCloud, the first-ever SaaS Application Management and Security Platform. David's entire career has been dedicated to improving the modern workplace through innovative, next- generation cloud (SaaS) technology.

David's extensive industry experience and thought leadership give him unique foresight into the future of cloud management and security, allowing him to predict industry trends years before anyone else. He is a long-time contributor to TechCrunch, Mashable, VentureBeat, and Forbes, where he writes about topics like enterprise cloud technology, cloud computing, and entrepreneurship. He has been featured in The New York Times, the BBC, CIO, Fortune, and more.

David is a native of New York City and holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Emory University.</comment>


Ask HN: MarkMonitor whois server hacked? - <AUTHOR> Running whois from a console for domains managed by MarkMonitor is showing a lot of spam entries. Checking whois though www.markmonitor.com website itself seems to be fine. Here is what I am getting:
>whois apple.com
   Server Name: APPLE.COM.ZON.COM
   IP Address: 184.108.40.206
   Registrar: DOMAINREGISTRY.COM, INC.
   Whois Server: nswhois.domainregistry.com
   Referral URL: http://www.domainregistry.com

   Server Name: APPLE.COM.WWW.ZON.COM
   IP Address: 188.8.131.52
   Registrar: DOMAINREGISTRY.COM, INC.
   Whois Server: nswhois.domainregistry.com
   Referral URL: http://www.domainregistry.com

   Server Name: APPLE.COM.WWW.BEYONDWHOIS.COM
   IP Address: 188.8.131.52
   Registrar: INSTRA CORPORATION PTY, LTD.
   Whois Server: whois.instra.net
   Referral URL: http://www.instra.com

   Server Name: APPLE.COM.WAS.PWNED.BY.M1CROSOFT.COM
   IP Address: 18.104.22.168
   Registrar: TUCOWS.COM CO.
   Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
   Referral URL: http://domainhelp.opensrs.net

   Server Name: APPLE.COM.MORE.INFO.AT.WWW.BEYONDWHOIS.COM
   IP Address: 188.8.131.52
   Registrar: INSTRA CORPORATION PTY, LTD.
   Whois Server: whois.instra.net
   Referral URL: http://www.instra.com

   Server Name: APPLE.COM.IS.OWN3D.BY.NAKEDJER.COM
   IP Address: 126.96.36.199
   Registrar: TUCOWS.COM CO.
   Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
   Referral URL: http://domainhelp.opensrs.net

   Server Name: APPLE.COM.IS.0WN3D.BY.GULLI.COM
   IP Address: 184.108.40.206
   Registrar: EPAG DOMAINSERVICES GMBH
   Whois Server: whois.enterprice.net
   Referral URL: http://www.enterprice.net

   Server Name: APPLE.COM.BEYONDWHOIS.COM
   IP Address: 220.127.116.11
   Registrar: INSTRA CORPORATION PTY, LTD.
   Whois Server: whois.instra.net
   Referral URL: http://www.instra.com

   Server Name: APPLE.COM.AT.WWW.BEYONDWHOIS.COM
   IP Address: 188.8.131.52
   Registrar: INSTRA CORPORATION PTY, LTD.
   Whois Server: whois.instra.net
   Referral URL: http://www.instra.com

   Domain Name: APPLE.COM
   Registrar: MARKMONITOR INC.
   Whois Server: whois.markmonitor.com
   Referral URL: http://www.markmonitor.com
   Name Server: NSERVER.APPLE.COM
   Name Server: NSERVER.ASIA.APPLE.COM
   Name Server: NSERVER.EURO.APPLE.COM
   Name Server: NSERVER2.APPLE.COM
   Name Server: NSERVER3.APPLE.COM
   Name Server: NSERVER4.APPLE.COM
   Status: clientDeleteProhibited
   Status: clientTransferProhibited
   Status: clientUpdateProhibited
   Updated Date: 27-apr-2010
   Creation Date: 19-feb-1987
   Expiration Date: 20-feb-2020
 <comment><AUTHOR> Can others run whois against various domains runned by MarkMonitor such as apple.com, google.com, microsoft.com and see if the entries are all hacked?</comment>


Hand-to-mouth living from a credit card company perspective - <AUTHOR> http://eduardo.intermeta.com.br/posts/2013/5/10/hand-to-mouth-living-from-a <comment><USER2> Many people who live payday to payday will be the types of people who if they had there pay doubled would adjust into the same payday to payday model.

In general these will be young people who are out to enjoy life and whilst many adapt a more moderate balance lifestyle, there are always some who carry on.

Certainly with the lack of incentives for savers, this certainly does not help motivate people and why should it.

What I would be interested in is a graph of fiscal behavour done per age groups and fiscal income. Also if they are single or married or have children. Then I believe you would see a more measurable trend.

Though it is worth bearing in mind credit card companies prefer people who live like this as they make them more money than not and with that is it a testiment to how well credit card marketing is actioned I do wonder.

<comment><USER3> Considering that the top 1% earners captured 121% of all income gains during 2009-2011 (yes, 121%, that means the other 99% of people's income went down)[1] it's also possible that many of these people _used_ to be able to save money every month and not live hand-to-mouth before the recession and the sorry-excuse-for-a-recovery, but that their declining real incomes have squeezed their savings margins down to nothing.

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/12/top-one-percent- inc...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/12/top-one-percent-income- gains_n_2670455.html)

<comment><USER4> Your statistic is shockingly meaningless. 2009 was the bottom of a recession and a stock market crash. By 2011 it recovered. If you look at an equivalent measure from 2007-2009, you'd see a negative number.

The top 1% of earners make most of their money due to the stock market and related activity __by design __, because if you're a shareholder in Coca-Cola, you want a CEO who actually cares about making Coca-Cola profitable over the long term, rather than someone who would collect a pretty salary for a few years and then retire to a life of leisure. You do that with equity compensation, stock options that vest over time - and, since satisfaction with money is logarithmic, you're going to need a lot of them.

Now, the overall level of justice achieved by this current system (or lack thereof) is in fact a valid topic of discussion, though largely outside the scope of the post I make here. By contrast, this cherry-picked number you present INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST.

I call on you to be ashamed of yourself. Unprincipled yellow journalism of this nature is bad enough in the wild, but HERE of all places we ought to value REAL information and understanding, not rhetoric and obfuscation. (Alternatively, please abandon Engineering and seek employment in the scummiest Marketing department you can find.)

<comment><USER5> It's unclear the reasoning behind this assertion that a CEO needs stock compensation to do good work.

Frankly if someone isn't professional enough to do their job without some cartoon carrot hanging in their face, I'm not sure how they would be suitable for a top position in the first place over those who apparently are. \-- It's also worth mentioning that there's little contention over the fact that salaries and wealth at the top of the pyramid are rising faster than the norm. The majority of GDP growth for quite a while has been going to the upper crust. I suggest reading the following if this isn't yet evident:

<http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html>

<comment><USER6> > Frankly if someone isn't professional enough to do their job without some > cartoon carrot hanging in their face

As the Joker said in the Dark Knight, when you're good at something,

never do it for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Paycheck timing is nothing new in the retail business, and it's used by virtually all of the big retailers to roll out promotions, product refreshes, new lines, etc.

Traditionally speaking, paycheck timing was used by retailers catering to low- income segments -- especially those on food stamps, and those who buy groceries on extremely predictable cycles (by necessity). But what's interesting, not to mention troubling, is that this trend is proliferating up the socioeconomic ladder. It's been going on for awhile now, dating back to before the 2007/8 crash, though certainly made a lot worse ever since that downturn.

<comment><USER8> Can you give me an example other than say, post Apr 15th sales/promotions to get tax rebate money?

<comment><USER7> Retailers segment their customers' trips to the store in much the same way a tech company segments use cases. So-called "stock-up trips," typically conducted after the first payday of each month, are when customers go to the stores to -- as the name implies -- stock up on groceries and supplies for the coming two weeks. "Fill-in" trips are ad hoc trips to grab specific items or meet needs that have emerged since the stock-up trip. A second stock-up trip typically happens around the second payday of the month. And so forth.

Shopping behavior -- particularly shopping behavior among segments of the population living paycheck to paycheck -- follows very predictable patterns like these, often by necessity.

Now, let's put this into practice. I'm managing a regional grocery chain. Let's say it's Kroger in the Midwest. I want to win customers' share of wallet on the payday stock-up trip, so they'll go to my store instead of a competitor's (let's call that competitor Meijer). I'll time my sale accordingly on key items (often these are "price indicator" items that signal price superiority over other competitors in the area). Meijer will be timing its sale the same way, and so a lot of game theory and competitive intel will come into play here. But this is why grocery items and household necessities are cheaper at these big chains two weeks out of the month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Most people that spend their full salary do never put more than 20$ of gas at a time. At the end, they spend around the same amount than others, but they seem to prefer to go the gas station many times instead of just filling up the tank._

When gas prices are volatile this actually makes sense. It's the same principle as "dollar cost averaging" when you buy stocks. Purchase a fixed dollar amount, and you end up buying more when the price is low, and less when the price is high, which is what you want to do. Therefore when I buy gas I stop at $25 unless I have a coupon or I'm somwhere that prices are significantly lower than where i normally buy (prices vary by $0.50--$0.75/gal within a 50 mile radius).

<comment><USER10> That would a case of people doing this to counter volatile prices if people also took advantage of the quite low gas prices they chance upon to fill it their car up completely.

But what the article says is that they don't put more the $20 at a time, period.

Such a behavior wouldn't see any advantage given volatile prices, because in the end you end up paying the same (you pay lower at some times, higher at other).

Which is the article points too: that they see the guys doing that end up paying the same amounts as the guys filling it up normally.

So it's not the volatile prices that get people doing that, it's perhaps a false idea of saving money, or that they infact do not have that much lying around and try to get to the end of week accounting for any emergency.

<comment><USER11> I've been there, and that was the case for me. You just don't commit resources to a full tank of gas, you never know what might come up. Sucks.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup? - <AUTHOR> I've been thinking quite some time now about making the move of quitting my fulltime job as a software engineer, and pursue my dream of founding a startup.
I'm 23 y/o and don't have much to lose really (except rent), and yet I'm still STRUGGLING to just make that move and start.
I'd love to hear your stories about when and how did you decide to do it? How did you start? How was it going to sleep knowing that you probably not going to have an income in the next upcoming weeks/months? <comment><USER2> Some of my friends asked me whether they should start a company, I typically suggest them to answer these questions first:

\- Have you ever made over $10k on your own?

Not from your day job salary. Not from public stock market. Making money needs practice. You start a company to make money. You'd better have some experience of making money first. Without working in an established company, are you able to make a meaningful amount of money and survive in this world?

\- What's your longest project?

Have you worked on anything for multiple years? Grit & patience need practice. Building a successful company takes multiple years, even decades. Be prepared.

\- When was the last time you were insulted by others?

If you grew up in a very comfortable environment (rich family, great schools — because your parents went to those great schools too, great companies, …), probably you already get used to compliment for your entire life. Now you are going to face a very very diverse set of people who don't know your family background or don't recognize your family name. If you are the kind of people who are easy to be upset by very minor things (e.g., people don't reply your email or people don't compliment you), you'd better stay in the friendly corporate.

\- What happened when you broke up with your ex or your friends?

People relationship is complex. You'll experience a lot of bad people relationship if you start your own company — breaking up with cofounders, firing employees, fighting evil investors, fighting con man, fighting bad reporters, dealing with malicious users, dealing with competitors (sometimes in person)… All kinds of drama. You'd better practice this kind of things before starting your own company.

<comment><USER3> 10K sounds like a lot of money, do you really set your own bar there? What examples did you encounter of people making 10K on their own while still working at corporate?

<comment><USER4> This is true not only for software or engineers.

10K is still significant but you definitely need to set your own bar.

Anyone in the 50K to 150K wage market needs to have a deep understanding of whatever it took to bring in 10K without your employer, it's going to take a lot more of that once you no longer have a paycheck from a job there.

Even building success selling used cars on the side can be very worthwhile to engineers who are considering becoming entrepreneurs, when it could be regarded as a career distraction on many other engineering paths.

And however long it took you to bring in the 10K, it's likely to require 5x to 15x as much time to match your employment income, when left to your own devices.

A lot of times when you get far above 150K in wages, any windfall can be based less on productivity and more as temptation so you don't start your own company when you think about it.

At that point you'd really need to independently be able to make a lot more than 10K a lot easier & quicker before it would make sense.

Might have to sell something at a lot bigger scale than a few cars then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My startup trail started the day I decided to take the summer off from living in NYC, and go to South America for the summer ( Peru ) to learn to surf while working all day on my MVP.

That was 2006. I never looked back.

Once you get used to doing things your way.. it's very hard to go back.

Let go of the golden handcuffs, put on your adventure hat, and consider finding a low-cost city/country to play in while you figure out product- market-fit[1]. If you are lucky you will also find other potential co-founders also on the same journey, and other talented local folk who are affordable. Who knows you may even learn a new language along the way! Worst case you go back to doing what you've been doing. It's not going anywhere soon in this climate.

[1][https://remoteok.io/](https://remoteok.io/)

<comment><USER6> I think you mean my other site [https://nomadlist.com](https://nomadlist.com), thanks for mentioning!

<comment><USER5> Pieter I simply cant keep up with our startups ;-) What do you have cooking under those sleeves these days?!

<comment><USER6> Haha, my latest one in progress is [https://airlinelist.com](https://airlinelist.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > making the move of quitting my fulltime job

> How was it going to sleep knowing that you probably not going to have an > income in the next upcoming weeks/months?

Do you need to quit your job to start working on a startup?

When I started my company at 23, I spent a full year working long nights/weekends and then quit my day job only after the company had some momentum.

If you can manage a day job and a side hustle, I'd very much recommend that. Although if your current day job expects more than a 40 hour work week from you, that could be a problem.

<comment><USER8> I'd extremely not recommend this. Everyone is different of course, but there's no way you can work a full time job, stay healthy, and dedicate enough time to a serious new endeavor. Don't listen to the hustle bullshit. If you want to do a startup, just quit and jump into it.

<comment><USER7> > there's no way you can work a full time job, stay healthy, and dedicate > enough time to a serious new endeavor

I agree. I didn't stay very healthy when I was working a day job and also working nights / weekends. It was exhausting.

Unfortunately I didn't have enough savings to be able to quit my job. It was definitely a trade off.

<comment><USER8> That's fair, and I assume it worked out ok for you in the end. I imagine people who are able to pull that off know who they are. Definitely understand the trade off.

I just think as general advice for young programmers, "work 60+ hour weeks" is very much the wrong message. Stay healthy and let your passion drive your work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I couldn't start anything from scratch so I bought the damn thing. That was my MBA. If I failed, I would consider it a sunk cost of education. People spend 100K on a good MBA. I spent less than that on the business I bought. Happily running it for 6+ years now with a bootstrapped team of 15 of us. Ok, some advice now:

There are 3 ways:

1\. Join a startup and go from there. Learn how things work in the startup world. You are only 23. It wouldn't hurt to work for a startup for 2-3 years and you may get somewhere after that.

2\. If you strongly believe in a specific idea, then try to execute on it now. Like you said, you don't have much to lose. What an awesome position to be in. However, you will most likely fail based on statistics and the fact that you don't know what you don't know yet. You are 23. You have to learn a lot of things in the world.

3\. Buy an existing business like I did. This obviously requires capital but you could buy a small say 1K MRR SAAS product/side project. You will have some things already setup at a small scale and you can go from there. Very hard though for someone who has never run a business BUT frankly, this is one way to force yourself into it.Think of the capital/investment as the cost of an MBA.

I would say 1 is the easiest, 3 is easier relatively but needs capital and 2 is the hardest.

Also, don't beat yourself up for not being able to start. Instead, find out what you can do TODAY to get to that destination of doing your own thing. If that thing today means joining an existing startup, do it. If that thing today means hanging out with similar minded folks who are already doing this, do it. If that things today means learning how to code, do it. Do something TODAY. How do you eat an elephant ? One bite at a time. Surround yourself with people who are doing what you want to do. It is hard to find them but try. Good luck!!

<comment><USER10> Out of interest, how much capital would one roughly need to buy a 1K MRR? I'd assume the valuation would be some multiple of the revenue with some combination of growth rate?

<comment><USER11> If you want to check out pricing on some low-revenue businesses, try Shopify's marketplace: [https://exchangemarketplace.com/](https://exchangemarketplace.com/). Much more ecommerce than SaaS, and there's some crap in it, but it'll give you an idea of multiples (which are very low at that size).

<comment><USER10> Thanks this seems great!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Based on my personal experience (SlashMap - fairly successful Slack plugin), I'd recommend trying to verify an idea before giving up your full-time job. For instance, you can start with a landing page to do so. I must confess that combining full-time work with a side project was challenging for me and affected work-life balance heavily in my case, but it may be the best choice if you're not ready to quit your current job. Working on a side project only in your free time will probably significantly slow down the progress, but you can think of finding a partner to help you with it (if the project succeeds you'll probably need a partner anyways). Opinion and complementary skills of another person may be keys to success as well. I'd say that if you really believe in your idea, it's very likely you'll find a way to verify it before quitting your current job. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm 41 and just started working on my thing a couple of months ago. I'm married but we don't have kids nor a mortgage because we've been digital nomads for the most part of the last 10 years. My wife is doing well economically so we decided together it was a good time to start working on something that will not generate income in at least 2 years.

After 20+ years in dev I got tired of making projects for others and finally decided on an idea that could work financially. Not to grow to millions of users, but to at least support myself.

</comment><comment><USER14> I quit my job at 23 to become a startup founder (18 months ago). Quitting wasn't too difficult for me. I started the job with the expectation that I'd work for a year and then do the startup. I had been spending my free time working on my idea(s) for a long time and was excited to go full time on it (I also didn't get much fulfillment from my job).

I was surprised to discover, long after quitting, that working full-time on your own ideas can come with it's own distraction: pressure to make money. Probably the biggest mistake I made from months 6 to 12 (startup idea #2) was being too concerned about structuring things in a way that would (hopefully) make it easier to charge money. I ended up spending a lot of time doing things that in hindsight weren't generating any value. It would've been much better to focus on doing meaningful things, whatever those may be.

I don't know the details of your situation, but that might be something to consider: if you can figure out a way to have a decent amount of time to work on whatever you want while still having an income from elsewhere, it might actually be easier to focus than if you were doing the idea full-time.

On the other hand, I am glad I quit myself. So maybe that advice is just BS.

For income: I might switch the "weeks/months" estimate to years ;). Running out of money hasn't been an issue (lots of savings from my job, my wife worked until recently, then we moved back in with my parents until the pandemic winds down). Opportunity cost of course is large, but that's fairly easy to ignore. I've learned an incredible amount during the past 18 months, so even if I can't get my startup to work, it'll have been a worthwhile investment.

I don't know if any of that is helpful. I'd be happy to chat if you like, my email's in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER15> As a 18 years old with fresh finished mechanical apprenticeship. I started a online gaming, irc bouncer, radio streaming company with my first salary.

Why? because I found no good gameserver to play on it at this time and bought myself a physical Server to fix that.

6 months later I quit my full time job and pumped up my business. Best decision ever! I never thought about my personal income. At that time I was still living at my Patents.

As of today, I founded multiple companies and sold them successful in the 8 digits euros.

Just do it, find something you like, focus on it and believe in your self.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just start it. Asking and reading others' stories is just another delay in starting. You don't have to quit, you can start working on it and if you continue to stay passionate then eventually make it your full-time focus.

</comment><comment><USER17> First one, was in college, didn't really understand what I was doing, got invited by a friend and I was just really excited about programming real stuff on my free time outside of school. Got out 2 years later, right before my partners graduated and really grew the company.

Second time, almost right after college, I started working as the first employee at another startup, at first it was really exciting, I felt like I was part of the founding team, contributed a lot to the direction of the company and got to work on the pitch as well as go to meetings with investors, but when the company started growing, a line was drawn between founders and employees. That's when I got together with one of the other employees and left to start our own company.

Thirds time, while running my previous company I decided to participate in a hackathon with a friend, we won the local chapter, then the global chapter and then we got funding.

Looking back, I've been extremely lucky and never really planned anything too much, things just happened. Also, if I could go back in time, I might have chosen to just dedicate myself to being a very good programmer instead of playing the startup game.

</comment><comment><USER18> I was about your age when I founded a startup about 8-9 years ago . One thing I did was never went to a full time job and the safety of regular an income . I took freelancing jobs and consulted few odd jobs for about 2 years as I worked to getting a MVP out and get seed funding .

I did have student loans pretty much like anybody else , and it wasn't easy certainly . Trying to balance working on consulting gigs and building your app at that age there is lot to learn to become better developer and also figure out how a startup works is hard.

My reasoning was financially the older you become more it harder to quit a full time job and do what you want. A house mortgage , family, kids their education etc keep adding up , your lifestyle may make it hard to quit .

The downside to the approach knowledge and experience helps a lot . While I learn a lot _fast_ , with my current understanding I could perhaps do what took 5-6 years in a year or two. However I don't think I would get remotely same knowledge had I not been working under that kind of pressure .

Would I do it again ? I don't know. I did a miss lot of typical twenties life , most of my peers / friends are in very different stages of life then I am : financially stable , found their life partners, have kids and settled down on life goals on what they want to do. While my startup is doing pretty well , until there is an exit , financially I am probably not far a fresh graduate, never could spend time in relationships , this despite being perhaps one of lucky ones still in the game and part of something fairly successful, there are many founders who had to face hard truths and try to get back to regular jobs or dig deeper and deeper in still lost in their ideas and having _lot_ tougher time than me.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm your age :)

I started my current one in college. Since high school I had every intention of making a living starting my own business, so that was the plan all along. I've been on hacker news since my early teens (different accounts) and I've been doing projects about just as long.

I'm working full time on my business. If the times were different, I'd look for a part time job serving coffee or something. I went back to living with my parents after college (probably a mistake), so I don't worry about supporting myself.

By now, I am pretty good at recognizing what a good idea is, and getting from idea to shipping something. I'm working on my marketing skills and being patient.

You say you're struggling to start, I imagine there is something specific that makes you feel that way:

Do you have an idea yet? How far have you gotten? Are you afraid to quit your job? Are you having difficulties putting in the time and effort?

</comment><comment><USER20> I found it useful to have cofounders as forcing functions. Also, the end of the previous thing: college->first startup, finishing my PhD->YC startup, being fired->CircleCI, and running out of money->Dark.

</comment><comment><USER21> I was 26; it was the dot-com boom. I had no clear plan but a potential client called me asking for something I could deliver at a price that they were happy with.

I was mostly profitable by about week 5 -- so I only skipped one pay cheque, but I didn't have children then, so it was easier to live cheaply.

But that was a service business: service businesses are easy to get started, but they are hard to scale. If you are thinking of making a product business, you are in for a much longer harder road.

</comment><comment><USER22> I worked a normal 9-5 job after college and knew within 3 months that it wasn't for me. I quit and did freelance work until I'd saved $100k. Then I stopped freelancing and put all energy into a startup. Having a cushion saved is the only way to sleep despite not drawing a salary. I recommend you find someone to start a venture with as it's less psychologically difficult when someone is in the same boat with you.

</comment><comment><USER23> I was doing some consulting work in an education-adjacent field for about 3 years. Was happy with the 2k MRR it was bringing in (albeit inconsistent at times during holidays etc).

A friend reached out if I could do some work for high schoolers. Kind of kismet with the move to remote education, as I started the program, significant demand for this type of work.

</comment><comment><USER24> it will be more difficult to do later when you have a family and when you are on mortgages.

It is also more difficult to convince a friend to become a co-founder when they have mortgages and a family.

</comment><comment><USER11> I started a dog treat company very recently (a couple of months ago), and it was definitely a combination of circumstance and everything I'd learned that made me decide I was ready to go for it.

On the circumstance side, I had actually left the tech industry to start a dog boarding business, but Covid hit right as I was about to close my SBA loan and start construction, so I cut bait rather than take a very large, personally guaranteed loan to start a business driven by people traveling and going into the office. I had decided to go the franchise route for that, largely to give myself the confidence that I would be able to get through all the unknowns with the backing of folks who had done this many times before.

After I called that off, I decided to strike out on my own and sell a frozen dog treat mix that I had been making for my dog. The pandemic circumstances (being at home, collecting unemployment) definitely helped, but the big obstacle for me was honestly less about time/money and more about a lack of confidence (which is weird because most people who know me would probably describe me as confident to the point of vanity). Honestly though, going through the initial part of getting the dog boarding business set up really helped - I had to deal with a bunch of stuff I'd never dealt with before (architect, permits, finding a contractor, leasing a space, getting all the various HR stuff set up to hire someone), and it just wasn't that difficult to deal with each thing as it came up. I think it helps that my background is in product management at early-stage companies, so that entailed a lot of generalist problem solving.

The other thing that helped, quite honestly, was seeing the other people in the franchise. They were, to be charitable, generally somewhat less sharp than the type of people I had become accustomed to working with in Silicon Valley, and most of them were running their businesses reasonably profitably. If they could run businesses, then clearly I ought to be able to.

I guess one last thing I'll add is that I own a few apartments in the Bay Area along with a couple of other folks, and that's been helpful both because they generate income and because that's a very small scale example of running a business (I have a full time property manager, so I don't have to do much), which is, again, a confidence builder. If you're able to start any kind of small scale business while working just to help build your confidence, that might be a good intermediate step even if you're not ready to fully quit and go out on your own.

</comment><comment><USER25> do you have an idea you could see yourself working on for 5-10 years? If so, quit your job and make the jump. You are going to be too burnt out from having a job and working your free hours towards building a start up on the side. Not having income will inherently drive you to work harder towards finding success quickly.

If you don't have any ideas, would recommend finding some ideas you are passionate about first while keeping your day job

</comment><comment><USER26> I prefer to experiment with ideas and ideally get an MVP out way before officially deciding that I'm "starting a startup". I worked on [https://divjoy.com](https://divjoy.com) for 6 months on the side and only decided to jump into it full-time after validating the MVP (mostly thanks to my Show HN).

</comment><comment><USER27> I started because I wanted to learn a new skill and I was bored watching TV etc. It was somewhat accidental. My only advice is to do something that is helpful to either you or a group of people or solves a problem that you have or others have.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://visualsitemaps.com/our-story/](https://visualsitemaps.com/our-story/)</comment>


The $105 Fix That Could Protect You From Copyright-Troll Lawsuits - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/dmca-righthaven-loophole/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29 <comment><USER2> Mailing a form with $105 to "Copyright RRP" with a PO Box in DC seems pretty sketchy.

Second, is this _really_ an issue that online communities need to address? In our site's terms and conditions, we clearly list a DCMA contact and registered agent. Is that not enough?

And who are these funds going to? A government agency? A contractor?

As I said, on the surface this seems pretty sketchy.

<comment><AUTHOR> The PDF is at "copyright.gov". Moreover, check out <http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/> the P.O. Box 71537 matches. What's the "sketchy" part here?

If you get sued by a copy-right troller, you have the option of hiring a lawyer to defend your "Terms of Service" or pay $105 and avoid the headache.

<comment><USER3> Is this something you can do after being sued?

<comment><USER4> No.

Think of it like this: if your dog bites someone today, keeping the dog on a leash in the future won't help you now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems like a monster profit center for future government. Just set up the laws so that you have to look up and pay dozens of little fees in order to have the law protect you from trolls. The trolls are incentivized to troll, you are pressured to pay up, and the government just sits back and watches the money roll in.

<comment><USER6> They're often used essentially as an "only applies to big companies" trick. Big companies running sites like YouTube are worried about liability, so push for a safe-harbor bill; other big companies owning large media portfolios are worried about the effects of a safe-harbor bill.

One possible compromise: pass a safe-harbor bill that only applies to big companies like YouTube, while still leaving smaller operators, like individuals running forums, liable for infringement. It's hard to pass something like that directly, so one proxy is to require some registration nonsense that will be trivial for any significantly sized company to comply with, but means that the provisions don't apply to smaller operations.

<comment><USER7> I like your healthy cynicism, but if that's the case, then why isn't the fee something like $2000? That's still trivial for YouTube, but pretty steep for some independent forum site.

<comment> loup-vaillant $2000 would be too obvious, and can't reasonably be linked to real bookkeeping costs. Anyway, even a smaller amount would do the job. Even at $10, people will tend to take the default path, which is not doing anything (meaning, not register).

Big companies, thanks to their legal teams, know how to behave. Small ones (or individuals, or non-profits), might not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"The idea is you need to make it easy for copyright owners to locate who you send infringement notices to," he says. "They shouldn't have to go hunting around."_ "

It seems to me that including a "DMCA takedown request" link in your footer should be good enough, but IANAL..

Also, since I'm quoting this article, perhaps HN should have one ;)

<comment><USER9> To quote the exact law: "The limitations on liability established in this subsection apply to a service provider only if the service provider has designated an agent to receive notifications of claimed infringement described in paragraph (3), by making available through its service, including on its website in a location accessible to the public, and by providing to the Copyright Office, substantially the following information"

IANAL, but it looks like it is not enough to put it in the footer if you don't _also_ give the information to the Copyright office.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. That's what this is all about -- an issue of a technicality where people did not pay the fee and register an agent with the copyright office, even if they did have a link in the footer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A few questions:

1 - If I have a blog on Posterous, is it they who need to do this, or I?

2 - From the form: who is the "Service Provider"?

3 - From the form: who is the "Agent Designated to Receive Notification of Claimed Infringement"?

Some of these might be obvious, but I'd rather not screw up a legal form.

<comment><USER4> (IANAL)

1 - Posterous, if you're on their subdomain

2 - The business, e.g., Posterous, Inc.

3 - An employee who takes on this responsibility. Posterous' is Sachin Agarwal, their CEO.

Here's Posterous' completed form:

<http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agents/p/poste.pdf>

<comment><USER12> 1 - What if you're not on their subdomain? I have a Posterous blog and a blog on GitHub Pages, both of which have comments. Am I liable if I don't send the government a $105 check?

If so, I might take a page out of Kyle Neath's book and make people email me if they want to comment: <http://warpspire.com/ask/>

<comment><USER4> I don't think it matters legally, but practically, they'll probably go after whoever owns the domain (or whoever looks like the biggest target).

What's legal doesn't really matter though, as $105 is far cheaper than any lawsuit - even one you'd definitely win. So if you're at all worried, I'd cover your bases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So...effectively does everyone need to pay $105 to start any sort of website?

Seems like a barrier to entry to me...

<comment><USER2> If your site plans to host user generated content, then it appears that this is something you'll want to address.

Not to mention an insurance policy that covers you in other various types of claims that can occur if you host lots of user generated content.

<comment><USER14> First mention I have heard of this kind of insurance need. More please?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if this applies to sites from outside the US? Or is being overseas protection enough from this sort of trolling?

<comment><USER16> IANAL, but cases involving that have been in the news a lot.

* Not being in the USA won't stop people from sending you bogus DMCA notices. Some places will honor them even if they don't necessarily have to.

* They can still sue. I remember one spam blocklist that got sued, in spite of being in the UK. But they had some volunteer or something (?) in the USA... allegedly. The judge entered a default judgment against them (nobody showed up) and they actually ended up hiring a lawyer in the end.

* Unless you really do have US assets, they probably can't do much, but that doesn't mean they won't try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What strikes me as ridiculous is that you can't fill out a form online and pay electronically. But then again this is the US government. There should be some kind of amnesty for those that do pay the fee now, so as to avoid this kind of trolling.

The funny thing is that this law is on the whole favorable to innovators, in that if you do abide by the requirements, you'll have the safe harbor from getting sued. If Viacom had its way, the law either wouldn't exist (thereby exposing hosts to all sorts of potential liability for the infringements of users) or it would require things like proactive filtering using fingerprinting technology. Thankfully, they have not prevailed in their lawsuit against YouTube.

</comment><comment><USER17> Protection money. Really, America?

</comment><comment><USER18> Or you could host your service in a sane country.

</comment><comment><USER19> Does anybody know how this works for Europe? Going through the list at <http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html> I see European companies, but isn't the DCMA only a US thingy?

</comment><comment><USER20> Seems that for a company like Righthaven there would be a pretty strong motivation to just find blogs that don't have a DMCA agent registration, post some copyrighted material in a comment area, and then sue.

I would hope that anyone who found themselves on the receiving end of such a lawsuit would do a little bit of detective work on the origin of the infringing content.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if you could sign up as a 'registered DMCA agent' and then provide a service to be the contact point for anyone who signed up with you. Some kind of app that simply received and forwarded messages to the appropriate parties. It would need to be thorough about keeping delivery/receipt records, but it seems pretty simple. Maybe a Kickstarter-worthy project!

<comment><USER22> IANAL, but I'd be worried that you would then be responsible (i.e. sue-able) if the actual responsible party did not take down the infringing content after you forwarded the notification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If comments on my site are handled by Disqus, is it they who have to mail this form and $105, or me?

</comment><comment><USER24> I wish I knew a little more about the law, but it seems to me that requiring payment in order to exercise your rights under the law is just not proper.

Basically the DMCA is saying that you cannot have protection under this part of law unless you pay money to them... if you sent them a letter, certified mail, informing them of your contact information, but did not include payment, they couldn't claim that you didn't notify them.

</comment><comment><USER25> If I setup my home wifi as a 'private internet cafe', register this form/fee and agree to comply with takedowns of copyright material that 'users' may or may not share on our network (hey its not my fault I 'accidentally' lost all my user logs), then does that shield potential torrenting activities?

Seems like a neat loophole to test.

<comment><USER26> The burden of proof in a civil lawsuit is "more likely than not". So, if they can convince a jury that since the internet was registered to _you_ in _your home_ , that you were 51% likely to be the one knowingly and willfully distributing copyrighted material, you lose.

I wouldn't want to be the first one to test that loophole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Somewhat related, how is proof of authorship demonstrated if the author decides to dedicate it to the public domain or something less restrictive than copyright? Is, for instance, archive.org considered legitimate evidence that "on day X you had published Y"? Any similar options?

<comment><USER28> The Writer's Guild offers a script registration service to help with proving authorship of scripts, and there are for-profit services too: www.protectrite.com and www.nrs-online.com (there are probably others, but I am involved with NRS so I know that one, and ProtectRite has been around probably the longest).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So, in how many years do you think copyright-trolls and patent-trolls will finally kill the internet?

</comment><comment><USER30> The goverment should be there to protect its citizen and provide a framework for justice without fees. This fee does not provide any form of function except being an income source for the government and lawyers and a tax on the people wanting to produce and invent.

</comment><comment><USER31> I find it ridiculous that this is happening. There is too much incentive for people to sue each other these days, and too often it's whoever is willing to pay the court fees that wins. This is a huge problem for small businesses and bootstrapped entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER32> Does no-one in the legal system see the injustice of current copyright law?

\---- Other idea:

If I owned a blog hosting website, could I register as the DMCA contact point for $105, and cover all blogs I host AS WELL AS THEIR POSTS?

I could start up pressword.com, host 10,000 blogs with user comments, and charge each blogger $10 for 'legal fees'.

<comment><USER33> > Does no-one in the legal system see the injustice of current copyright law?

See it? They're leveraging it for personal gain!</comment></comment>